Kevin Bender of Insignia's Newport Beach office tells GlobeSt.com that Brookfield has renewed for the same amount of office space it occupied in its previous lease, which was due to expire in 2005, but the company will now have all 13,340 sf in contiguous offices. Bender, who represented the tenant, explained that part of the Brookfield space was split between two structures in the three-building, 360,000-sf South Coast Corporate Center. The firm is holding on and adding to its office at 3090 Bristol St., last year's BOMA building of the year. He says the homebuilder expects to move into the new office area in about two months. The company has been at the South Coast Corporate Center since 1996. Property owner MetLife Inc. was represented by Rich Essen of Cushman & Wakefield's Irvine office.

Brookfield has been building homes throughout North America since the mid-1990s as a wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield Properties Corp. of New York City. Brookfield Homes was spun off Jan. 6 as a public company, with its base in Del Mar and trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Last year, Brookfield ranked among the 20 largest homebuilders in the country.